Tea in Kenya - A story of Empire, Capitalism, and British Legacies

This doctoral project on tea growing in Kenya traces the colonial history of tea, both as a material commodity and as a

symbolic representation of the British Empire in the "White Highlands", the preferred area of British colonial settlement in Kenya. I focus on Kericho County, where most of Kenya's tea is produced and where most multinational corporations are

located. Relying on archival records and ethnographic fieldwork, I aim to analyse the structural colonial legacies of tea in Kenya. Hereby, tea is conceptualised as a total social fact, a commodity around which the social occurs. Following the social life of tea, I aim at disentangling its effects on the everyday life of contemporary Kenyans - be it through the

schools and churches established by the white planters, (land)ownership structures, or the tea pickers' precarious working and housing conditions on the tea estates. At the heart of this project lies the question of how tea growing

shaped the physical and social landscape in the "White Highlands". Analysing this legacy, I intend to link (macro-)political

questions to the everyday practices of those involved in its production. Thus, I aim to contribute to overarching debates

on the workings of capitalism and colonial extraction of labour. This incorporates revisiting the "Kenyan Debate" on

capitalist "development" in the "periphery", and central questions of landownership, key to the Kenyan fight for independence and source of contemporary conflict.